Conrado sat down with BtoB at the Business Marketing Association's annual conference last month in Las Vegas to talk about these changes and how Motorola is marketing to its b-to-b segments.

BtoB: What are the challenges facing CMOs?

Conrado: If you have a CMO title and your only responsibility is communications, then you are missing two components. First, you have to be involved early in product introductions. You need product teams that are embedded closely with your marketing teams. They will have the best knowledge on the segment.

The other piece that has to be key is field marketing, having an impact on revenue generation and having an impact on the challenges in the field.

BtoB: Prior to your restructuring, how did you approach vertical marketing?

Conrado: We didn't have a vertical approach—we were focused more on the product side. Now, within our government space and enterprise space, we have vertical marketing teams that just focus on verticals. On the enterprise side, we have teams handling manufacturing, transportation and logistics, health care, utilities and retail.

When we do research, we break it out by teams in each vertical. For example, in transportation, we look at how do you address parcel delivery, and in health care, how do you manage collecting different specimens within hospitals? We approach it from the challenges faced by each vertical, then work closely with the product marketing teams to create campaigns.

BtoB: How has the downturn impacted your marketing?

Conrado: When we look at the economy, we look at it by vertical segments—which [ones] are up, which are down and how they're trending. If we think one segment will be down and another one picking up, then we can shift our marketing dollars.

BtoB: How are you allocating your marketing budget?

Conrado: We're shifting more dollars to interactive. We feel that interactive media provide very effective ways to get to the end user. On the b-to-b side, when we break it down to very narrow segments, we are only talking to a few thousand users, so by having interactive assets and working with our databases, we can have very targeted messages. It allows us to take much more of a laser approach.

BtoB: Which interactive technologies are you investing in?

Conrado: Since last year, we've updated our Web content management system, and we are also doing international enhancements to all our sites. We're also enhancing our database capabilities and putting in new lead management systems.

We're in the process of building up organically. My philosophy is, if you have a strategy on how you want to shift your marketing organization, you have to do it in building blocks. We know we have to change, but we have to look at making changes over time across organization design, process and support systems. M

By Kate Maddox
BtoBonline.com

Ex-Googlers Launch Rival Search Engine

Cuil, pronounced "cool." Is backed not only by $33 million in venture capital but also by Anna Patterson. Her last Internet search engine was so impressive that Google bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own system.

On their website they state:
“The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now. Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.
Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Then we offer you helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want and that you know is out there. We believe that analyzing the Web rather than our users is a more useful approach, so we don’t collect data about you and your habits, lest we are tempted to peek. With Cuil, your search history is always private.

Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge. For knowledge, ask Cuil.”

Is it Cuil's turn to take the lead in the search-engine business?

Probably not but time will tell.

Try Cuil now

Realizing that a dealership's customer data is one of its most important assets inspires the need to manage it appropriately. OIW can provide you with secure, accurate, always accessible, and understandable information. When data is correctly managed, it can be the most cost effective tool in your dealership.

Why Manage Data?

In both small and large dealership’s data management attempts typically begins once data has become copied and extracted in such a haphazard fashion that it often becomes impossible to catch up and identify what exists. OIW customizes and develops the methods and the tools to insure successful data input and retrieval procedures which not only prevent data conflict but also encourage and expand on later usage.

There is no dealership that has not suffered due to data inaccuracy.
In many cases incorrect data may have caused additional work or at least inconvenience and stress.

We have saved some dealers not just hundreds but thousands of dollars in postage and printing by cleaning their Impact 21 lists for them.

	Learn More

	Midwest Office 219-756-6227 West Coast Office 503-372-9029 Email: sales@optinwireless.com

Registration is now open for Enterprise Wireless 2008, November 5-7 at the Doubletree Paradise Valley in Scottsdale, AZ.  New companies like Trango Broadband, Inilex, Multitone, Vehiclepath and Primus will be joining returning companies including Motorola, Kenwood, Aeroflex and others.  Come in early for a day of training from Motorola on November 5th and stay through Friday morning for the Executive Roundtable discussion, which will have leading experts on achieving outrageously successful customer service, expanding your sales, FCC Licensing: Basics and Beyond, hiring IT professionals and affordable marketing. 

This is the year when the information you need to chart your path for the year ahead is more important than ever.  Invest in your business.  Come to Scottsdale and get the answers you need to strategically position your company for the technologies, the regulatory environment and the spectrum issues that will impact you in 2009. 

The weather in November in Scottsdale, Arizona couldn’t be better – it will be dry, cool and ideal for outdoor networking sessions.  Rooms at the Four-Diamond Doubletree at that time of the year are usually $350 or more a night and EWA has locked in a terrific $159 a night rate. Make your reservations and register today and save with early registration.  Every $275 registration includes a networking cocktail party, two lunches, access to all of the conferences and the show floor.

Don't miss this opportunity!

Where Has the Time Gone?

As I write this I am in total disbelief. I can’t believe it is almost August. Where has the time gone? Over half the year behind us and you know as well as I do, that as soon as Labor Day is past the other holidays rush at us at warp speed. I also know from being in the field all those years, that we all had plans and good intentions on what we were going to do in the coming year. Many of those plans were put on the back burner because we lacked the one ingredient to make it happen…time! Now those plans are in the deep freeze. Let’s get together and thaw them out and cook up something really good! We still have some of that precious ingredient TIME (you thought I was going to say thyme didn’t you ?) left until year end. Let’s start cooking up some business, ask Opt In Wireless for the recipe!

Regards,
Michele

Contact Michele by email or call 619-985-8415.

In a marketplace crowded with look-alike marketing service providers, Opt-In Wireless stands apart by offering sophisticated and powerful solutions tailored to your dealership’s needs. Backed by over 30 years of actual experience in Motorola sales and marketing and the strongest commitment to client success, Opt-In Wireless is your partner for email and direct mail marketing success.

Please contact us for your Premier Purchase Marketing Needs